Often Irreverent, Mostly Rational Blog for Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. One Day, We'll Be Perfect.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Clip and save: A reusable post on the bullpen

We probably don't need to say this game in and game out, and since we'd like to preserve precious resources (of time, energy, and psychological fortitude), we're offering you a reusable blog item that you can refer to after most games. Feel free to clip the following out and put it in your wallet for future reference:

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"The Jays' bullpen really looked bad out there last night."

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Excuses, apologia, and the GoBau! movementBecause our mancrush on Brett Cecil and his Thrilling Thunderous Thighs remains strong, and because we fear that we may have jinxed him with our ruminations on his ace-dom, we won't discuss the six runs that he gave up, nor will we give much of an airing to the fact that this was his second cruddy start in a row and his ERA has just popped up over 4.00.

13 comments:

It's becoming completely pointless to even discuss Cito's bullpen management, but why would you use Shawn Camp for one inning, and immediately follow that by using Jason Frason for two innings? Unless it was an honest mistake: "Hey Bruce, let's use one kid, the short one with the funny ears, for one inning. Then we'll use that other kid for the next two, you know, the short one with the funny ears."

Also, crazy coincidence time: you used the words "Clip and Save" in a post about the bullpen the night after the Nationals had a promotion called "Clipp and Save Night" in celebration of the surprisingly solid 8th and 9th inning guys in their own bullpen. That's pretty neato, unless you were aware of said promotion, in which case I guess it's not such a crazy coincidence after all.

eyebleaf, it's not that I don't trust Camp -- he's actually my favourite member of the Jays bullpen -- but I've been operating under the impression that one of his biggest strengths is his ability to pitch multiple innings, and my gripe was that Cito should have stuck with him for more than just 10 pitches. Looking at those stats, though, I guess my eyes have been deceiving me.

And yeah, bullpen management notwithstanding, the game was already lost before either of those guys came in to pitch. I was just mostly baffled by the idea of using your two-inning guy for one inning, and your one-inning guy for two innings all of a sudden.

Ty: Camp's been NAILS. After your comment I was interested to see how many times he's gone two innings; he's done it 5 times, by my count. But as his pitch breakdown shows, he's much better in short spurts. As for Frasor, you're right: it was a wacky move to leave him in. That was his first two innings appearance all season.

Frasor's splits are strange.

April: 9.2 IP, 8.38 ERA, 2.59 WHIP, .370 BAA.

May: 11 IP, 0.82 ERA (only 1 earned run!!1), 0.73 WHIP, .167 BAA

June: 7.2 IP, 8.22 ERA, 2.22 WHIP, .324 BAA

Perhaps Cito was giving him a chance to work out some kinks last night. Trying to get him back to the GLORY days of May. Damn Sausage King.

I liked the idea of Camp as closer until somebody else pointed out that he's a ground ball machine and he's most useful coming on with runners on base to induce double plays like nobody's business - if he was closing games, he wouldn't have the chance to do that anymore, I'm not sure I trust anybody else in the bullpen in those types of situations anymore.